Milgram's Experiment of Obedience - Reflective Essay

Running head: SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 1
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Reflective Essay – Milgram’s Experiment of Obedience
Concept:
Some of the most famous researches of discipline in psychology were done by Stanley
Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University. He carried out an experiment concentrating on the
dispute between obedience to authority and private consciousness. Milgram studied the
justifications for the genocide of those charged during the Second World War. He wished to
explore whether the Germans were especially obedient to the statistics of the authorities, as this
was a prevalent reason for the Nazi murders in the Second World War. Milgram chose
respondents for his experiment in newspaper advertising to allow male respondents to take part
in the research of education. The operation would be that the candidate was paired with some
other individual, and they drew loads to figure out who will be the learner and who would be the
professor in the experiment. The draw was corrected so the contestant had been always the
professor, and the student was one of the Milgram confederates acting as a true participant. 65
percent (two-thirds) of respondents (i.e. Teachers) remained at the lowest rate of 450 volts. All
respondents remained at 300 volts (Baumeister, 2016).
Milgram conducted more than one research project, performing 18 versions of his
research. Everything he did, changed the situations to observe how it influenced obedience.
Normal people are more likely to obey the orders provided by an authoritative figure, to even the
degree that they murder an innocent animal. Devotion to authority is embedded in all of us from
the way we are raised. People are more likely to follow the orders of others if they acknowledge

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their authority as morally acceptable and/or legitimately based. This reply to supreme authority is
discovered in a range of situations, such as school, family, and workplace situations. The
legitimate and philosophical aspects of conformity are of enormous importance, but we know
little about how many people act in actual situations. The excessive readiness of adults to get to
just about any length of time at the authority of the authority is the main finding of both the
research and the most urgent justification.
Action:
In the action part, we were made to watch the Milgram’s experiment and the tutor
explained to us that the Milgram’s experiment was conducted to check the extent of evil a human
being has inside of him. All of us were asked the importance of Milgram’s experiment and that
led to the discussion on ethics of the study and its advantages. Further, we were asked if we
could go through with the same as Milgram did to people. The discussion was followed by the
unethical nature of the experiment. In addition to this, we were asked if these experiments should
be continued. As a group, the class came up with various points as to why this study was not
ethical and whether it should be continued or not. Some students used World War II as an
example of blind obedience under authority. They supported the relevance of the study for the
same reason. In fact, the benefits of the experiments were also discussed along with the cost. We
were also asked if we would shock the person till the end, everyone denied except for one
student who said he would take the orders and do it but he wouldn’t shock the learner. According
to Milgram's Agency Theory, there are two types of behavior in a social situation-
Autonomous state: People take responsibility for their own actions.
Agentic state: People follow the directions of others and hold other people responsible.
They act as agents of other people’s will.